Six Prisoners Escape From Ecuador’s Biggest Jail

January 13, 2024 Hour: 2:25 pm

On Friday night at least six prisoners escaped from the Coastal Penitentiary, the largest and most populated in Ecuador, in the midst of a prison crisis where riots are registered in six other prisons with more than 150 officials taken hostage.

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According to police reports, the escape occurred in the back of the prison, the main prison complex in the coastal province of Guayas, composed of five prisons where around 12,000 people are held.

Among the prisoners who escaped from Riobamba is Fabricio Colón Pico, alleged leader of the criminal organization “Los Lobos”, who is accused of being involved in a plot to attack the attorney general Diana Salazar.

Explosion of violence in Ecuador shuts down science – Science https://t.co/xNEoWK3R8F

— Ecuador Travel News (@ecuador_travels)
January 13, 2024

Both the escapes and the riots were accompanied by a wave of violent actions attributed to organized crime gangs that included explosions and car fires, kidnapping and murder of police officers and the assault of a group of armed men on a television station in Guayaquil.

The incident occurred when the government of President Daniel Noboa was about to implement his plan to regain control of the prisons, many of them controlled internally by these criminal groups, whose rivalries have left more than 450 prisoners murdered since 2020 in a series of prison massacres.

The government’s intention is to isolate the leaders of these criminal groups until two modern prisons are built under the Bukele model, with which Noboa seeks to imitate the strict prison policy of the president of El Salvador.